"politicians settling down and getting to the root of any problem is a thing of a long gone time. Or did it really ever happen?"

Until very recent times the politicians did not really go at loggerheads over "social issues". Mostly they debated about money - funding of pet projects, military budget etc. Today we rarely receive news / information about how tax dollars are being wasted -errr. spent...mostly we hear the constant beat of racial/gender/oppression vs empowerment etc...
It's one thing to come to some kind of agreement over allocation of funds - it is quite another debating social engineering matters. The first can be easily resolved and conversely the second can have no definitive answers - it just is not possible to satisfy everyones sense of internalized aggrieved status.
Gov't officials have developed a neat trick of manipulating "votes" by manipulating the peoples weakest and most vulnerable characteristics -emotions - not everyone has enough material wealth (money and property) to feel like they have a real stake in the game but literally every person has a sense of self-identity and that is where the leftists have wormed their way into the minds of the people. They have metaphorically tapped into the central core from whence they can make the subject do anything - anything at all.